


frightened by my feelings (i only wanna be a relief)

by backofthefront



Series: so save that heart for me [4]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, the pining finally leads to something, wahoo, what even is this series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 09:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12229932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backofthefront/pseuds/backofthefront
Summary: "...despite his arm going numb from the weight of Kent leaning on it, Jeff wouldn’t move it for anything. That says everything.Jeff says nothing."





	frightened by my feelings (i only wanna be a relief)

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'should have known better' by sufjan stevens.

 

They’re at Kent’s place when it happens. 

 

Of course they are; Kent’s still benched. Swoops will be headed to the roadie against the Ducks in a couple days, but if he’s being honest with himself (and really, when is Jeff anything but painfully, bloodily honest with himself), he’ll miss Kent. So he comes over, makes some dumb excuse about the pad Thai place not delivering to his house so he has to order from Kent’s, even though they both know Kent likes Thai way more than Jeff ever has or will. It’s whatever. 

 

So, they’re watching tv on Kent’s obscenely large couch, and Jeff tells himself they’re only curled up into each other for body heat, or like, he thinks he read something about athletes naturally navigating towards tactile friendships once? But the knot in his stomach has nothing to do with hunger, and despite his arm going numb from the weight of Kent leaning on it, Jeff wouldn’t move it for anything. That says everything. 

Jeff says nothing. 

 

(He’s honest with himself. Never claimed to be so with other people. They usually aren’t with him, anyway. He bites the inside of his lower lip and tells himself it’s fair. That, though, isn’t honesty with himself, so that train of thought morphs into a dull, throbbing nervous energy at the base of his skull.)

 

Jeff puts it out of his mind, and they’re watching Married by Mom and Dad, occasionally shoving handfuls of popcorn in their mouths and mostly missing. 

When the Thai comes, Jeff turns the tv over to some documentary about tree frogs and watches Kent’s face light up. It’s dorky as hell, and he wants to take a picture. 

 

They sit like that for awhile, Kent on the verge of sleep and Jeff accidentally nudging the discarded noodle containers with his foot. The phone rings. 

 

Kent’s face twists into a grimace when the call comes in. His hand flies to the phone, but not before Swoops gets a glimpse of the flashing screen, with the name “Zimms” lighting up the display, the contact name burned into Swoops’ retinas with all the efficiency of a white-hot cattle prod searing flesh. 

 

He turns his head, inquisitively, following the rigid line of Kent’s body as he hops towards the door. 

 

Kent turns to him, body the shape of a question mark, covering the microphone. He mouths a “sorry,” looking pained. And then he’s exiting the room, no doubt slinking down the hall for some privacy. 

 

Jeff thinks, logically, that he should feel like an intruder. If anything, though, he’s just frustrated. Not angry, really, but more defensive. In sports, even back when he played high school basketball, that had never been his position, though it was an attribute to everything else about him. 

 

Jeff thought his relationship with Kent was tenable enough that he didn’t really worry about Jack. That was old hat. Maybe it was perverse to be thinking this way, like he was Kent’s boyfriend, like he had any right to him, like he could police how Kent felt about anything- but Jeff’s mind would snap back to the article he shouldn’t have read. The photo spread of Zimmermann, smiling, the straight line of his shoulders looking like confidence and less like tension, a gleaming white smile that shone even in a picture, no doubt put there by the thought of his little Georgia peach boyfriend and the coaching of some tenacious photographers. 

 

And then he’d think of Kent, the lines of him, the way he was practically concave when they weren’t in public. How he had slumped when Zimms’ name flashed up on the phone. How Jack has put that posture there, that invisible weight on Kent’s shoulders. Something sick inside Jeff made him want to rob Jack of sleep. (And, okay, maybe on that last part he was projecting; all those nights Jeff spent staring up at the ceiling like it would give him answers, little mewls from a bed over on roadies, the product of dreams he didn’t want to fathom.) 

 

Swoops picked up his phone, fiddling with it for a minute before turning the tv back on. He didn’t process what was on, really, but he left it on the tree frogs documentary. He wanted nothing more than to step after Kent into the hall, rip the phone out of his hands, step on it. Not let him hear things that would only make him sadder. 

 

Instead he stared at the tv. It wasn’t his place, he thought, as he set his jaw, resolute. 

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Kent wonders why he didn’t decline the call. He feels like he’s breathing in knives, like the air is stabbing at his lungs, and he wishes to heaven and hell that could at least summon some anger, or some longing, or anything. When he’s talking to Jack, though, he’s mostly just empty. 

 

“I meant to call you, Kenny,” Jack said softly. Nervous, like the old times, but laced with something new. That was a tone out there by distance, or self-assurance, maybe. 

 

“Yeah.” Kent didn’t say it like a question. 

 

“It went to print a few days earlier than I expected,” Jack said by way of an apology. “Getting ahead of a leak.” 

 

Kent shrugged, before remembering that Jack couldn’t see him. “It’s alright. I get it.” There was silence on the line for a moment, a wordless moment in time shared by two people who were three thousand miles apart. 

 

“Yeah, well. I hope I didn’t- It shouldn’t cause any trouble for you. My agent talked to your agent,” he said, and Kent bit back a laugh. Wasn’t that a bitter salve. 

 

“Not- I didn’t say anything, about-” Jack said hastily. Kent sighed. 

“Listen, I know. It’s okay. I’m not… It’s none of my business,” Kent says. “You didn’t have to call me,” he says. Why didn’t you call me earlier, he doesn’t say; I’m learning to finally stop wishing for you to call me, he doesn’t say. 

 

“I’m glad you’re happy,” Kent said instead, and was moderately surprised to hear the ringing truth of it in his own ears. 

 

“I am. I really am.” Jack’s voice cracked like a warm fire, a popping log heaved into the flames in the wintertime. 

 

“I am too,” Kent said. He wasn’t sure of that, but he knew he wasn’t exactly sad, either, so it was close enough to a truth. 

 

They hung up, the words unsaid remaining pregnant in the air, cacophonous. 

 

When he put the phone down, switching the screen off, He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t quite happy. But he could be. 

 

What he doesn’t understand is why Jack had felt the need to call now, after it had been a few days since the release of the article in the first place. Maybe it was an act of self-flagellation not to ask, like he deserved the punishment in the lingering question. Maybe he knew he wouldn’t like the answer. 

 

He knew why his agent hadn’t told him, though it hurt to put the exact words to it. They were worried. Had been. And Kent knew he had been slipping- not on the ice, never on the ice, but he had permanent purple-blue bags under his eyes and nightmares that kept coming back but that he couldn’t quite remember when he woke up, and most of all he wanted something he couldn’t have and it showed. 

 

And why Jack hadn’t given him a heads up? Why he felt that Kent hadn’t been worth even a call, even a text- those had always been harder than a smile to get from Jack, which was saying something (but still easier than an "I love you"). 

Well, back when they still played together, Bob had put Jack’s childhood stuffed animal, a teddy bear, in a donation bin by mistake, along with a slew of other items from the Zimmermann household. Jack had frowned, but told his father not to bother seeking to get it back. 

Jack had always considered himself beyond childish things, and he was never one to dig through the trash. 

 

Kent set his phone down on the hall table, screen face-down so he wouldn’t be confronted with notifications.

 

In the bathroom, he splashes cold water on his face, clearing his vision and only making the gaunt proclivity of his face more pronounced. He blinks, hard, a few times, gripping the edge of the counter, cool wet marble. 

He can’t think of a pep talk to tell himself, so he breathes out and tells himself nothing. 

 

When he slinks back into the tv room, Swoops beams up at him, and Kent senses his worry start to dissipate. Vaguely, he feels guilty for making Jeff worry about him.  

 

“Ya alright?” Jeff asked, muting the tv. Kent smiled, choking back his inhibition. 

 

“I realized something,” he says, plopping down dangerously, electrically close to Swoops. 

“I need you to know something,” he says, before Swoops can ask what he’s talking about. 

 

When he leaned up, pressing his lips to the pulse point of Jeff’s neck, he tasted salt. 

 

Later, he’d work out whether that was the doing of tears or merely the inherence of skin. 

 

“That’s what you wanted to tell me?” Jeff asks, throaty and gratified and Kent pulled away. 

 

“Yeah,” Kent says, a confession with no words. Seemed fitting. There was so much unspoken between them. 

 

Jeff meets his eyes. “Me too,” he says, and in the moment that’s enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a littlewerid, characater-motivation wise, because they all have really limited perspectives and don't really understand each other's motives. 
> 
> a quick note, though-  
> "why didn't kent's agent/publicist tell him jack was coming out?" well, what kent thinks is that the world is collectively either babying him or out to get him. dude's a little paranoid. really, the agent knows nothing about their history and didn't think telling kent about the sexuality of someone he used to play with was relevant or any of her business. the agents exist in their own realm outside of what jack, kent, swoops, etc know.


End file.
